The Problem

Have you ever had a problem that wouldn’t go away, where every answer you threw at it seemed to come up inadequate or wrong?  

You worked tirelessly to handle the darn thing, certain that finally you had it licked, and then to your amazement, there it was again, standing right in front of you with a smug smirk on its face.  Yes, problems can and do smirk.  They can also spit in your eye and give you the finger.  Like some people, they seem to find it amusing when they can get a rise out of you.

I used to react to these pesky problems.  I would put on all my battle gear like a dutiful soldier readying for war.  I’d put on my best frown and sharpen my evil eye.  I’d gather mighty curses to be tossed at my foes like grenades.   I’d want to break something or plot some kind of secretive vengeance that I could implement against them when least expected.  That’s what problems seem to want, they relish in their obscene power to consume us, to eat at us from the inside out. 

Then one day I woke up, put my problems aside and decided to assume responsibility for a whole different world of problems other than my own.  Big problems— like the opioid epidemic and the promulgation of gender confusion, the inexcusable injustice of psychiatric labels and the drugging of millions of innocent children via our public school systems, the false and abusive nature of the Psychiatric Diagnostic Manual.  I had never previously dreamed that I had any responsibility for these social failures and false purposes that now riddle our society.  When I finally began assuming some responsibility for these social ills and their flagrant betrayal of human trust, my individual problems suddenly lost their all consuming power.  In the light of this new found optimism, I began receiving way too many smirks and middle fingers to acknowledge any single one of them.   They simply fail to get a rise out of me.  I can look at them with integrity and certainty that I go to battle wielding the greatest weapon of all— the truth.   I know it is they who are the problem, not I or our children.

My new book, THE GOLDEN STALLION, is for kids aged 8 and up.  It is my contribution to righting a wrong.  It is my assumption of my own responsibility for a social problem our kids face in this age of special interests and academic misinformation.  I hope it speaks to your parental needs and your child’s innate wisdom of the soul.  

Richard and Mary Rensberry, Authors at QuickTurtle Books®